Multivitamin Supplements May Reduce Breast Cancer Mortality

Can A Multivitamin A Day Keep Breast Cancer At Bay?

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

A few weeks ago I wrote about soy and breast cancer survival. You’ve probably seen the latest headlines: “Multivitamin Supplements May Reduce Breast Cancer Mortality” and are wondering if they could possibly be true. After all, wasn’t it just a short time ago that the headlines said “Multivitamin supplements have no effect on breast cancermortality” or that “Multivitamins may increase your risk of death”?

With all the conflicting headlines, you have every right to be skeptical about the latest news. So perhaps we should start with looking at the previous studies and discussing why they disagree.

What do we know about multivitamin use and breast cancer survival?

Three very large studies have reported no correlation between multivitamin use and breastcancer incidence. So it is pretty clear that multivitamins don’t prevent breast cancer.

However, breast cancer incidence and breast cancer survival are two different things. In the first case you are starting with healthy women and asking how many of them develop cancer. That is what we scientists call a primary prevention study. It is very difficult to prove the effectiveness of any intervention in a primary prevention study. In the second case you are starting with a sick population and asking if an intervention provides a benefit. It is much easier to prove whether or not an intervention is effective in this kind of study.

There, have been several small studies looking at the effect of vitamin supplementation in women who already had breast cancer. While the results have been mixed, the majority of the studies showed that vitamin supplementation did appear to reduce breast cancer recurrence and mortality.

What makes this study different?

The women in this study were part of 161,608 women enrolled the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study to investigate the effects of multivitamin use in post-menopausal women. In fact, this was one of the studies to report no effect of multivitamin use on the incidence of breast cancer (Neuhouser et al, Arch. Intern. Med., 169: 294-304, 2009).

What the present study did was to look at the those women in the WHI who did develop breast cancer during the previous study and followed them for an additional 7.9 years to see if multivitamin use affected breast cancer survival (Wasserthiel-Smoller et al, Breast Cancer Res. Treat., 141: 495-505, 3013).

This is the largest study of its kind (7,728 women). It started with an older and sicker group of women than previous studies. All of the women were 50-79 years old at the time the study began, and all of them had invasive breast cancer at the time of enrollment into the study.

The results were quite impressive. Multivitamin use improved survival by 30%, and the results were highly significant.

Strengths of the Study:

This was a large and very well controlled study. The authors did an excellent job of controlling for confounding variables that might have affected the outcome.

Multivitamin use was measured at multiple time points. It was assessed at enrollment into the original WHI study and at each subsequent doctor visit. The multivitamin usage for the purpose of data analysis was the usage at the time of breast cancer diagnosis, but the authors also corrected for any change in vitamin use post-diagnosis.

The study was in agreement with the majority of previous studies, further strengthening the conclusion that multivitamin use in women with breast cancer improves the likelihood of survival.

Weaknesses of the Study:

Because previous studies have been mixed with respect to the effect of multivitamins on breast cancer survival, further placebo controlled intervention studies will be required before multivitamin use becomes part of the standard of treatment for breast cancer patients.

Most of the women in the study were post-menopausal. It is unclear if multivitamins will provide the same benefit to pre-menopausal women with breast cancer.

This study measured consistent multivitamin use before and after the diagnosis of breast cancer. It did not look at women who began multivitamin use after diagnosis. So we have no idea whether starting multivitamin use after diagnosis would have also been beneficial.

The Bottom Line:

1) This study strongly suggests that multivitamin use may help improve your chances of survival if you are unlucky enough to develop breast cancer. While more studies are still needed, this study certainly strengthens the argument for multivitamin use.

2) The rap on multivitamins has always been that they aren’t needed by healthy people who have a good diet. However, multivitamins are important for assuring good nutritional status if your diet is not optimal or if you have increased nutritional needs – either because of your genetic makeup or because of illness.

3) The difficulty is that you usually don’t know if your genetics increases your vitamin needs, and once your disease has progressed far enough to be diagnosed it may be too late to improve disease outcome. That’s why many experts consider a multivitamin supplement as an inexpensive form of nutritional and health insurance. I concur.

4) As for the fear that multivitamins might just kill you, that hypothesis has been disproven by several subsequent studies including one published just a couple of weeks ago (Macpherson et al, Am. J. Clin. Nutr., doi: 10.3945/ajcn.112.o49304).

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

A Sleeping position that has your head tilted puts pressure on your spinal cord and will cause headaches. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times, and the reasoning is so logical it’s easy to understand.

Your spinal cord runs from your brain, through each of your vertebrae, down your arms and legs. Nerves pass out of the vertebrae and go to every cell in your body, including each of your organs. When you are sleeping it is important to keep your head, neck, and spine in a horizontal plane so you aren’t straining the muscles that insert into your vertebrae.

The graphic above is a close-up of your skull and the cervical (neck) vertebrae. Your nerves are shown in yellow, and your artery is shown in red. Consider what happens if you hold your head to one side for hours. You can notice that the nerves and artery will likely be press upon. Also, since your spinal cord comes down the inside of the vertebrae, it will also be impinged.

In 2004 the Archives of Internal Medicine published an article stating that 1 out of 13 people have morning headaches. It’s interesting to note that the article never mentions the spinal cord being impinged by the vertebrae. That’s a major oversight!

Muscles merge into tendons, and the tendons insert into the bone. As you stayed in the tilted position for hours, the muscles actually shortened to the new length. Then you try to turn over, but the short muscles are holding your cervical vertebrae tightly, and they can’t lengthen.

The weight of your head pulls on the vertebrae, putting even more pressure on your spinal cord and nerves. Plus, the tight muscles are pulling on the bones, causing pain on the bone.

Your Pillow is Involved in Your Sleeping Position and the Causes of Headaches

The analogy I always use is; just as pulling your hair hurts your scalp, the muscle pulling on the tendons hurts the bone where it inserts. In this case it is your neck muscles putting a strain on your cervical bones. For example, if you sleep on your left side and your pillow is too thick, your head will be tilted up toward the ceiling. This position tightens the muscles on the right side of your neck.

Dozing off while sitting in a car waiting for someone to arrive, or while working for hours at your desk can also cause headaches. The pictures above show a strain on the neck when you fall asleep without any support on your neck. Both of these people will wake up with a headache, and with stiffness in their neck.

The best sleeping position to prevent headaches is to have your pillow adjusted so your head, neck, and spine are in a horizontal line. Play with your pillows, putting two thin pillows into one case if necessary. If your pillow is too thick try to open up a corner and pull out some of the stuffing.

Sleeping on Your Back & Stomach

If you sleep on your back and have your head on the mattress, your spine is straight. All you need is a little neck pillow for support, and a pillow under your knees.

Stomach sleeping is the worst sleeping position for not only headaches, but so many other aches and pains. It’s a tough habit to break, but it can be done. This sleeping position deserves its own blog, which I will do in the future.

Treating the Muscles That Cause Headaches

All of the muscles that originate or insert into your cervical vertebrae, and many that insert into your shoulder and upper back, need to be treated. The treatments are all taught in Treat Yourself to Pain Free Living, in the neck and shoulder chapters. Here is one treatment that will help you get relief.

Take either a tennis ball or the Perfect Ball (which really is Perfect because it has a solid center and soft outside) and press into your shoulder as shown. You are treating a muscle called Levator Scapulae which pulls your cervical vertebrae out of alignment when it is tight.

Hold the press for about 30 seconds, release, and then press again.

Your pillow is a key to neck pain and headaches caused by your sleeping position. It’s worth the time and energy to investigate how you sleep and correct your pillow. I believe this blog will help you find the solution and will insure you have restful sleep each night.

Wishing you well,

Julie Donnelly

About The Author

Julie Donnelly is a Deep Muscle Massage Therapist with 20 years of experience specializing in the treatment of chronic joint pain and sports injuries. She has worked extensively with elite athletes and patients who have been unsuccessful at finding relief through the more conventional therapies.

She has been widely published, both on – and off – line, in magazines, newsletters, and newspapers around the country. She is also often chosen to speak at national conventions, medical schools, and health facilities nationwide.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

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The statements in these articles have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Any Health Care changes should be made only after consulting with your Doctor and licensed Health Care Advisor.

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